March 1st, 2018 11:55 P.M.

Hello, My name is Noah Dzielawa and I am currently in my fourth year at Westtown. For my Senior Project, I will be traveling to Kansas City Missouri to work with former Westtown student and class of 1988 Chef Celina Tio. Since graduating from Westtown, Chef Tio has won a James Beard Award, and has appeared on The Next Iron Chef , and Top Chef Masters. So you might be asking yourself, why is a high school student going to work with an award-winning chef?

Well, Cooking is a passion for me. For as long as I can remember cooking and especially food has been a strong point in my life. There are pictures of me at age 3 in a chefs hat, and apron helping my late Grandmother bake. Since then I have improved in my cooking skills and now have cooked for multiple people at school and at home.  When my Grandmother got sick with Breast Cancer for the second time, I began to slowly stop having the opportunity to cook with her, due to her strong and tough fight with this terrible disease. When my family and I lost her back in the fall of my sophomore year, I knew that I wanted to pay tribute to her by doing what she taught me to love. It was one of the ways that I was able to connect with her after she passed away.

In this project I hope to deepen my passion for cooking, improve my knife skills, to see how life as a chef is, and how to create a restaurant concept and menu. It is now a little over 11 hours until I leave Philly Airport the Mid-West, and of course there is the possibly I might not make it out due to one of the great East coast winter storms rolling into the area in the next few hours. So, I will check in soon, and  I am off to pack!

– Noah